Re: IDRATEK announce xAP support

["Kevin Hawkins" <yahoogroupskh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

One of the big changes that has happened in my HA exploits is that
it's now possible to do almost anything - it's just a case of the best
- or sometimes the most interesting way of doing it.

xAP has helped me so much in this respect in that it's shown me 'how'
to do things.  I'm not a
professional programmer but coding xAP 'conduits' that allow devices
to talk to each other is relatively simple, even I've managed that in
VB. So xAP has given me the methodology and I can leverage so many
other peoples hard work in devices or applications - like in this case
IDRATEK . Writing an application like Cortex for example is a huge
undertaking - being able to just plug into it is great - and it doesn't
mean dedicating devices to Cortex in that all xAP applications and
devices are networked so you can have truly distributed control - many
many applications should you wish - each doing what they do best. This
has obvious tradeoffs though in manageability.

One thing that has surprised me is that the connections between
objects in Cortex carry 'compound' data and Cortex does very clever
things ensuring that temp values etc are connected appropriately, eveb
intelligently building links for you. I need
to understand this some more.  I haven't yet investigated for example
how Cortex might handle text values etc.

Aside from the fact I have C-Bus lighting I also have my alarm system
attached via Ethernet and the PIR's, attached directly to the alarm
panel present via xAP. So that has worked well allowing me to have an
isolated (and professionally maintained) alarm system integrated with
Cortex.

Also I have a lot of the very low cost (and tiny) 1-wire temperature
sensors around - maybe 25 or so - on my heating system ,  boiler
flow/return , hot water tank, as well as for each room.  IDRANet
modules offer wall switch type single sensor versions  but would not
have easily allowed this proliferation in a cost effective or
physically suitable manner. So that's worked well and the sensors
import into Cortex in just the same way as the IDRANet ones, offering
the same inputs and outputs.

I want to investigate getting CallerID into Cortex (Meteor via xAP),
getting broadcast messages from Cortex displayed on xAP devices eg my
PC as popups and my TV / media players. Also using HouseBot , a great
realtime touchscreen interface for PC and PPC devices , as a frontend
to Cortex - so lot's of interesting projects ahead.

Glad there's a user there already - I may have some questions for you
as I delve further ;-)  If you do venture into xAP then please mention
this to the guys at IDRATEK as I would like them to be aware of the
uptake. The xAP support is part of the Automation Network Object and
Vivian has spent a considerable time on the integration and it offers
many more features than the previous xPL only support.

Kevin



--- In xap_automation@xxxxxxx, "Paul Bendall" <paul@...>
wrote:
>
> Kevin,
>
> I am very interested in what you are doing on this front. I have
> Idratk as my HA but haven't really any XAP applications at the
> moment.
>
> Paul
>
>


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